


Why do you love me?

by Butterfish



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Car Ride, Coming Out, Falling In Love, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 12:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfish/pseuds/Butterfish
Summary: Arthur and Alfred were never meant to fall in love. But they did.





	Why do you love me?

“You know what’s a good love story? Shrek.”

I glared at Arthur. As he sat with his beer and cigarette, legs crossed and head tilted back gazing at the night sky, he looked normal. But perhaps his cigarette was feeding more than his nicotine addiction. I leaned in to smell it, but he pulled away with a weird look on his face.

“What you want?” he asked and pushed the smoke between his lips.

I pulled back into my own seat and shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “What was that about Shrek?”

It was just past midnight, but heat still lingered in the air. Even in my shorts and tee, I felt sweat trickle down my back, and I shifted in my seat wondering if Arthur could see the patches beneath my arms. Luckily, he seemed more occupied with the night sky. It seemed it didn’t matter how many times I drove up on this hill and opened the sunroof - he would sit and stare with the fascination of a child realising how endless the universe is.

But normally he was quiet. Not tonight.

“Well, you know how all those love stories are always like, someone beautiful falls in love with someone beautiful? But here they just love each other no matter what they look like.”

“Why are you thinking about Shrek?”

“Why not?” Arthur had a sip of his beer and glanced at me shortly. A smile lingered on his lips. “Got anything better to talk about?”

I took in a deep breath and grabbed at the steering wheel. The leather was worn. I trailed my fingertips down the sides of the wheel, counting the bumps and tears, as I tried to come up with a smart comeback. See, Arthur knew exactly what he was doing. Just a few weeks back, I had confessed my love, and he had stared at me with this dazed expression, as if he hadn’t heard me. And I, desperate to fill the silence, had started blabbering about how I used to collect bottle openers as a kid. Whenever Arthur tried to interrupt, I would overrule him with a question. It went like this:

\- Arthur: Alfred, when you say love-

\- Me: Oh, my god I had one shaped like a shark. Like, the head would bite off the top of the bottle. That’s what it looked like. Did you ever have one like that?

\- Arthur: No, but can we just talk about how lov-

\- Me: Lovely it is tonight? Yeah, I know, superb. Hey, did you collect anything as a kid?

Ever since that night, we had been mostly quiet, the silence only filled with the odd question from Arthur, and, as if he was testing me, if I questioned his decision, he would just say, “Got anything better to talk about?” And I would not.

How could I talk about love when his first reaction was not to reply?

“Okay,” I finally said, “so what about Beauty and the Beast? He’s hideous. They still fall in love.”

“Psh,” Arthur rolled his eyes. “She’s pretty, and then he turns pretty. What’s amazing about that? Should’ve called it Beauty and the Beauty.”

“But she didn’t know! Just like in Shrek.”

“What do you mean, they knew from the beginning what they looked like.”

I gave him an odd look. “No, she was pretty and then she got, well, she became  _different_.”

He returned my odd look. “What? She was the same the whole way through.”

“No, Fiona was a princess and then she became-”

“Man, Alfred, I’m not talking ‘bout Fiona!” Arthur rolled his eyes again, this time so hard I thought they might pop. He turned in his seat to face me and shook his hand in eager as he spoke, the ashes falling from his cigarette. “I’m talking about the dragon and the donkey!”

I turned toward him too and gawked. “What, you’re on about the side characters?”

“Don’t call the donkey a side character.”

“He’s not even got a name. He’s a side character.”

“He’s got a name.”

“Oh yeah?” I leaned in and smirked, “Then what is it?”

Arthur’s lips moved but stopped before he started speaking. He narrowed his eyes and leaned in as well. “It’s Donkey, obviously.”

“Obviously you’re full of it. Or drunk. Or both.” I took the beer from him and had a sip myself. It was lukewarm. “So, why’re you thinking of them anyway? What makes them a good love story?”

“Well, they’re completely different, yeah? And they still fall in love. They should be enemies - the dragon tried to kill them! But they overcome it. They can see something in each other. That’s love, man. That’s true love.”

“Right.” I had another sip of the beer.

“So what do you see in me?”

I coughed. Drops of beer covered the dashboard, and Arthur laughed. I could feel the beer burn in the back of my throat as I tried to swallow the rest of it. My voice was weak when I said, “What did you say?”

“I asked, what do you see in me?” Arthur repeated. This time, he wasn’t laughing, and when I was finally able to stop coughing and look at him, he looked back with a pained expression. He slowly put the smoke to his lips, had a drag, exhaled.

“You’re no donkey,” I said.

“And you’re no dragon,” he said. “But we’re very different. So why do you love me?”

I stared at Arthur. And I thought, how can I even start to explain? How do you explain love to someone, especially the one you want? I know there are people out there who can write poems and draw amazing art and just make others  _understand_. But I’ve never been one. I have never been able to express myself creatively, less alone with words, so how was I meant to make everything clear to Arthur?

See, Arthur and I were never meant to be. Not even in a romantic sense - we were never meant to even be friends. Growing up, Dad made it clear to me that men and women belong together, and any desire to live differently is not only a sin, it is sure damnation. It is the damnation of the soul, of the family, of society as a whole. Growing up, I imagined that if I were to act on the feelings I had inside, the ground beneath my feet would split and swallow me whole.

Then I met Arthur. At church. And he did not have any hesitation telling me that no damnation would befall those who love. “How can love be bad?” he said when we met and I told him my worries.

“Well, it could ruin society,” I argued.

“So can capitalism,” he said, “yet people embrace it. Perhaps it’s easier to embrace the evil we know that the good we have not experienced.”

So our weekly meetings started. I could not have him at home in fear Dad would see him, so we started driving to remote places in my car, and we would just sit and chat for hours. Soon, we understood each other on a level where words were not even necessary. So our silence began. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind silence. I had always been worried what kind of thought could brew during silence, but with Arthur, I had no fears. Anything I was? - well, was good enough for him. So it was good enough for me.

Until now.

Because I still feared my own feelings, and even Arthur could not calm me this time, because he was the cause of them. And they were so strong. The feeling of complete acceptance. How could I explain this to him?

“How,” I said, my voice weak. Arthur cocked his head to the side, but he nodded. He wanted me to continue. “How can I explain,” I said, “that you saved me and threw me into the ocean all at once.”

A little smile played on his lips. He reached out, his hand taking mine, and he kept nodding. Kept encouraging me.

I licked my lips. “How,” I said, “can I make you understand that if I hadn’t met you, I could’ve died having never lived.”

“Alfred, why did you not let me speak that night?” Arthur asked, his voice soft.

I licked my lips again. I gulped. “Well,” I said and looked down at our hands. My fingers rubbed against his. “I wasn’t sure what you were going to say.”

“Listening is the only way to know,” he said.

“I know,” I said, “but I’ve always found it hard.”

“A man of action,” he smiled.

I smiled a little too, nodded, and looked down.

Then his hand went to my cheek, pulled me in, and he kissed me. In that moment, I felt the ground did open and swallow me whole. But instead of fear, I felt happiness, being sucked into a vacuum of the unknown. It was as if I had been blindfolded and told I stood at the edge of a cliff my whole life, and now, as I took a step, I realised that perhaps the world was different from what everyone had always said.

Arthur pulled back. “I am a man of action too,” he said, “Sometimes.”

I didn’t realise, but I had closed my eyes. I opened them, looked at him, and asked, “Why do you love me?”

“I never said I did.”

I blinked, feeling my heart hurt until I realised he was holding back a laugh. Soon, he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and he started giggling.

I had to giggle too. Soon, we were laughing. The beer was dropped to the floor, the cigarette forgotten somewhere in the ashtray of my car, and we just held on to each other and laughed and laughed.

“You know what’s a good love story?” I said as I managed to catch my breath.

Arthur pulled back a little, still looking at me and chuckling, “No, what?”

“You,” I said and dragged my hand through his hair, “and me.”

He cocked his head to the side. “You and me,” he repeated. “A dragon and a donkey.”

“Well, we may ruin society,” I said, mocking myself.

Arthur’s eyes glimmered. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s.”

And you know what? I was ready to.


End file.
